Install Epson ET-3850 Printer Driver on Slackware 15.0
I recently bought an Epson ET-3850 printer from Costco to replace my HP OfficeJet which was about 10 years old and the family was starting to have issues with establishing a wi-fi connection to it on their Windoze laptops. It took quite a while to setup. The Epson seems to be doing the job. Time will tell, however I discovered that setting it up for Slackware would also take a bit of effort. Drivers are only available on the Epson website in RPM or DEB format so I had to create a Slackware package to install it. Here’s how I went about doing that.
- First, download the RPM package from the Epson Support website.
- Convert the RPM to a Slackware
.txzpackage using therpm2txzutility with the following options:
-c: to make sure the file permissions are set correctly-S: to extract the install scripts from the RPM (be careful with this)-n: name the package using standard Slackware format-d: make a slack-desc from the RPM’s metadata
# rpm2txz -c -S -n -d epson-inkjet-printer-escpr2-1.2.4-1.x86_64.rpm
- Now review the script. Make any changes, if necessary (I didn’t need to), and update the converted package:
# mkdir temp && cd temp
# explodepkg ../epson-inkjet-printer-escpr2-1.2.4-x86_64-1.txz
# makepkg -l y -c y ../epson-inkjet-printer-escpr2-1.2.4-x86_64-1.txz
- Once that is done you can install it:
# cd ..
# installpkg epson-inkjet-printer-escpr2-1.2.4-x86_64-1.txz
The printer did not show up as available to install in the “System Settings” app so go to the local CUPS webpage at http://localhost:631 and do the setup from there. Print a few test pages. It seems to be working fine on my Slackware laptop. You can move the package to your other Slackware machines and install there too.